Second career victory is his biggest yet, as he patiently seizes WGC-Accenture Match Play title in wild fashion
February 25, 2014- Jason Day watched with equal amounts of awe, amazement and frustration as Victor Dubuisson first came back from being two down with two holes to play in their WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, then got up and down twice from various desert flora during the sudden-death playoff to save par. But Day never wavered, trusting his putting stroke to eventually slam the door on Dubuisson’s Houdini act.
In 2013, Day made 96.4 percent of his putts inside five feet. He’s one of the best players in the world in one-putt percentage, which explains why his four-foot putt on the 23rd hole never left the hole. That one-putt par gave the 26-year-old Australian his second career PGA TOUR victory and boosted him to No. 4 on the Official World Golf Rankings.
Day is one of the PGA TOUR pros featured in Golf Magazine’s newest instruction book – PLAY LIKE A PRO (Time Home Entertainment Inc., 2013; $29.95, Hardcover). In PLAY LIKE A PRO, Golf Magazine’s Top 100 Teachers – the nation’s most elite group of golf instructors – analyze the techniques and moves of the game’s elite and make them accessible to the average player.
Day’s chapter is on putting stroke consistency, a vital tool to improve anyone’s game, from the 36-handicap beginner to an elite player like Day. His knack for combining speed and distance control gives him the ability to sink putts that other Tour players merely lag close. And the reason for that distance control is his stroke consistency with the putter.
“One of the reasons Jason Day is so good at making putts on the first attempt is that he knows how to roll the ball at the right speed and the right distance on every putt,” said Dallas-based instructor Marius Filmalter, one of the world’s premier putting instructors.
In PLAY LIKE A PRO, Day’s putting stroke is broken down and analyzed by several Top 100 Teachers. Practice drills that reinforce and build swing speed are also included by Filmalter and Top 100 Teacher Keith Lyford of Old Greenwood G.C. in Truckee, Calif.
Their lessons and drills reveal one reason why at the WGC-Accenture, Day put on a clinic in how to survive and advance in match play; he owns the best winning percentage of any player with a minimum of 15 matches in the capricious event (14-3, .824) and why he never trailed over the final 53 holes. Of the 36 greens he missed, he saved par 32 times – a mind-boggling conversion rate of 89 percent. The Tour standard in 2013 was 66 percent.
In 2012, Day had a 10-putt front nine during a round at the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospital for Children Open, where he one-putted every hole but the third. That same year, he one-putted 42.6 percent of the holes he played. The Tour average was 37.7 percent.
“There are a lot of good things to copy in Jack Nicklaus’ putting stroke, but none are more important than the position of his right elbow, which was always tucked against the right side of his torso from start to finish,” Filmalter writes. “This right-elbow position – something I see in the stroke of current PGA TOUR star Jason Day – is a key component in swinging your putter back and through on the correct path and with good tempo.”
A comparison to Jack Nicklaus is never a bad thing for any golfer, especially one chasing his first major championship after compiling six top-10 finishes – including three in the four majors in 2013 – in just 13 majors.
GOLF MAGAZINE: PLAY LIKE A PRO
By GOLF Magazine’s Top 100 Teachers
Edited and Introduction by David DeNunzio, Managing Editor-Instruction, Golf Magazine
Publisher: Time Home Entertainment Inc.
Publication date: October 22, 2013
$29.95, Hardcover, ISBN: 978-1-60320-239-8
About the Authors:
GOLF MAGAZINE, one of the most widely read golf publications in the world, presents award-winning features and articles every month to help golfers stay on top of their game. Golf.com provides up-to-the-minute news from the professional tours, live scoring, and course and equipment ratings that can’t be found anywhere else. Its video instruction library features hundreds of score-saving tips and drills from the Top 100 Teachers in America.
THE TOP 100 TEACHERS IN AMERICA, Golf Magazine’s team of instruction professionals, are recognized as the best coaches in the game. There are more than 28,000 PGA of America members, and the magazine selects only the 100 most elite among them to help golfers lower their scores, improve their swing, hammer the ball longer and putt lights-out. For more information, visit golf.com/instruction.
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